


one thought, head empty, hands full

by trees_so_thin



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Friends With Benefits, M/M, Pining, i guess ., rated mature for implications because im a weenie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:40:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26302075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trees_so_thin/pseuds/trees_so_thin
Summary: fitzroy has thoughts he wont think and argo runs his mouth.OR i use a motif too many times for paragraph structure
Relationships: Argo Keene/Sir Fitzroy Maplecourt
Comments: 4
Kudos: 51





	one thought, head empty, hands full

**Author's Note:**

> "wow you absolutely love the idea of them being friends with benefits but with yearning" [shoots you] i know . i have one braincell and i use it on either this or chaos fitzroy . i have 2 concepts and i will do them to death . thank you and good day

Fitzroy doesn't think about it. Ever.   
It had plagued him for a little while after the first time Argo kissed him, but eventually it became normal in some way. He didn't think about it during waking hours at all. Sometimes Argo would shift in his seat in a way only Fitzroy had seen, or he'd move and expose skin underneath the edge of his shirt that only Fitzroy had explored. Sometimes that would catch Fitzroy’s eye, and he would feel a discomfort in his stomach, hot and turbulent, and it would make him catch the edge of a memory, but never enough to think about it.   
Fitzroy stays firmly detached from their situation in the waking world. 

Sleep is another thing.   
Fitzroy sleeps with his eyes open, and in his dreams he sees projections against the ceiling he stares up at every night. Usually they're fleeting, shifting shadows and creatures, or mundane people passing through, as twisted and incoherent as any normal person would experience. Usually.  
Sometimes he dreams of Argo.   
Not often, but he's there enough that Fitzroy is sure they're going too far. If he's that prevalent in Fitzroy's subconscious mind, he must be too attached.   
He comes to this analysis every morning after the dreams, in a bitter and numb state of frustration and confusion, but nothing ever changes.   
He assumes it's supposed to change if you address it. And he's addressed it to himself, right? Not like he's going to bring it up with Argo. Their relationship is something that exists only in that fugue state of misplaced boredom Fitzroy gets in during the week. Every other hour they're just friends. Business partners.   
Nothing more.   
So Fitzroy doesn't think about it. 

He's not thinking about it now.   
The ceiling is spotted with damp --less than one would expect from a run down school dorm such as this, regardless of it being the supposedly high end dorms. Fitzroy's eyes are locked on one larger patch, trying to find the patterns within it, trying to ignore the dream playing out in front of him, half aware that he's asleep, half aware that he's on the edge of waking.   
It's not an elaborate dream, nor particularly clear, but he's lucid enough to register the strangely physical feeling of it.   
He’s noticed a correlation lately. 

Every so often Argo kisses him back slower, moves softer. (He looks at Fitzroy with more longing, too, but Fitzroy never notices.) It's not exactly what Fitzroy expects, or even wants, but he tends to go along with it purely to not fuck up the thing they have going.   
Sometimes he hears Argo crying softly afterwards, but that's also something he doesn't think about.   
The correlation of these occurrences with his dreams of Argo isn't something he wants to probe, but he recognises the fact.   
Fitzroy thinks his subconscious heart probably knows him better than he does, no matter how much he wants to fight it. He lets it go where it wants to in the night.   
But he's not thinking about it. 

Dream Argo is still there.   
He can feel the touch, somehow, extremely light, but there nonetheless. It's frustrating, like a feather tickling him for too long, but not quite as torturous. More than anything he wants to feel Argo genuinely, or at least alleviate the phantom touch himself, but the sleep paralysis still has too strong of a hold over him for that to happen.  
He starts to examine the damp again. One of the spots is shaped like a crab.  
The vision of his roommate leans over him and comes into his field of vision, and Fitzroy isn’t quite sure if this is what Argo actually looks like, but he guesses it’s just the traits he can remember while half comatose.   
He’ll admit that he’s very pretty. But only because this is a projection from his own mind, and he’s not awake right now.   
He won’t tell Argo that. 

The dream wavers as soon as Argo kisses Fitzroy, and the bubble pops as Fitzroy jerks his head away from the pillow a bit too violently.  
It’s still dark inside his room, the first hints of morning light only just starting to slide their way past the edge of the curtain. The damp on the ceiling isn’t as interesting anymore. His blanket is lying crumpled on the floor.   
Fitzroy comes back to himself after a while, shaking the ringing from his ears and wiping sweat away from his brow.   
There goes another one.  
He would give Gary his last crepe right now to be cured of dreams like this. 

“I _don’t_ feel anything for Argo,” he mutters under his breath to nobody in particular, shuffling around the room and sifting through the pile of clothes he keeps on the floor. “It’s just my brain working through previous experiences.”  
_Yeah, sure._  
“It IS!”   
_Keep telling yourself that. You’ll end up hurting yourself more._  
He isn’t sure who exactly he’s arguing with, but he abandons the internal monologue. It’s not doing him any good.   
He’s not going to think about it. 

It’s also dark in the kitchen. FItzroy can see the Firbolg sleeping in a pile on the floor in the common area, and wonders exactly why he didn't go to bed in his actual room, but he’s given up trying to understand the big guy a long time ago now. If he wants to sleep on the floor, out in the open, so be it.   
He can’t turn on any lights because of this, or start any loud appliance to make himself an early breakfast or cup of coffee, so he settles for a bunch of grapes he digs out of the crisper. He assumes they’re the Firbolg’s, but hey, sharing is caring. The eerily uncanny eyes on the skull shaped utensil caddy Rainer had given them as a gift when they had moved dorms stare back at him as Fitzroy’s eyes unfocus.  
The grapes are soft and inedible. 

The Firbolg is not stirring on the floor in the common area.   
Tentatively, stepping lightly as he can to not wake up the mound of fur snoring into the floorboards, Fitzroy makes his way over to Argo and the Firbolg’s shared room.   
Just Argo’s room right now, he concludes.   
He knows it's probably dangerous for whatever feelings he’s harboring and pushing away, but the feedback from his dreams still lingers, and right now all he wants to feel under his fingertips is smooth skin punctuated by occasional rough scales, and all he wants to hear is the way Argo raggedly whispers his name when he’s looking at him like that.   
_It’s NOT any sort of feeling. It’s just because of my dreams._  
The way he can physically feel his heart thudding in his stomach is not convincing for his own arguments, but he just stands and counts each second, calming himself before he knocks as quietly as he can on the closed door.

Argo’s voice is groggy, but not as if he’d been _just_ woken up.  
More of a “this-is-the-first-time-i’ve-spoken-today” kind of groggy. Fitzroy is glad that he at least hadn’t been _that_ rude.   
“Uh….Come in..?”  
Gently pushing the door ajar, Fitzroy pokes his head into the room, blinding himself on the thin stream of light now pouring in through a concentrated gap in the curtains.   
“Shit. Uh. Well, um, good morning?”  
Argo seems nonplussed as he sits up in bed, back propped straight against the wall, tattered old book in hand. Fitzroy sees him finally, blinking away the sunblindness, and isn’t able to stop his breath catching in his throat at the way the specks of sunlight dance on the genasi’s face. And his hair. And his chest and arms and fingers.   
Ridiculous.   
“What d’ya want?” Argo enquires, setting his book aside in a decidedly uncaring way, bent out of shape with its pages flat on the bedside table. “Not normal for ya to be up this early. Or…..uh, in here.”  
“The Firbolg is sleeping on the carpet. I’m within my rights, and you can’t make me leave.”  
“Well, okay.”   
Argo still wears a mask of confusion, but it’s broken by a sweet, genuine smile when he resigns to the fact that Fitzroy isn’t budging and he takes in the barbarian’s sleepy, determined face.  
Fitzroy isn’t thinking about how that soft grin just made his heart thud arrhythmically. 

An electric buzz takes over his fingers and toes, and he can’t stand there and not do anything anymore. The few strides that carry him towards Argo’s bed on the far side of the room seem to take forever, but he gets there, shedding his shirt even though he had just put it on ten minutes prior. This felt like a shirt off situation.   
No explanation why.  
“Well, this wasn’t scheduled,” Argo manages to mumble, before Fitzroy’s chapped lips crash into his and he gets swept up in the half-elf’s roaming embrace, all hands and bodies pressed together.

Argo is certainly thinking about it.   
He loves Fitzroy more than he can let on without breaking terms and conditions. He can deal with it most of the time, but sometimes he wants to scream it so loudly that the pressure of keeping it bottled up inside makes him feel like crying.  
Sometimes he does cry.   
He hopes Fitzroy hasn’t seen.  
He wants to say it now. He’s wanted to blurt it out from the moment Fitzroy poked his sleepy little blonde head into the room. It almost jumped out when Fitzroy was walking towards him. It was so close to leaving his mouth when he caught sight of skin and muscle, smooth but marred by the occasional scar.   
So close.   
He lets it go now, silently, lips pressed against Fitzroy’s neck; the only way he can do it without Fitzroy knowing.  
 _I love you. I’m in love with you._  
The words fill his mind just as Fitzroy fills his senses.   
Argo is thinking about it.

Fitzroy is not.  
He’s just letting sensation overwhelm him, letting himself be lost in the moment, satisfied to feel Argo’s hands for real this time, no longer skating over him like a phantom but real, strong, digging into his flesh. For once, Fitzroy feels good about it. No longer anxious about being caught, no longer scared of catching feelings. The physicality is good. He doesn’t have to think, or speak.  
Argo tastes like salt and seawater.  
Fitzroy pulls one of the rogue’s hands down to his thigh, where the dream touch still lingers, and Argo brushes those leftover cobwebs away, the touch no longer frustrating Fitzroy because of its lightness, but instead making him push for more against the very real pressure of Argo’s hand.  
He wants to keep going, further and deeper and more intimate, but he’s getting in over his head.  
Argo’s fingertips crest over the ridge of a long scar on the inside of Fitzroy’s leg, and the sensation is so heightened that he accidentally sparks up a little bit of electricity, startling Argo, who falls away from him with a yelp. 

They stare at each other for a long time.   
They’re positioned awkwardly, Argo half slumped against the wall, his legs trapped under Fitzroy. Fitzroy is flushed and embarrassed, and his hair sticks up messily, but he blinks and looks at Argo again and he can’t help laughing.  
He hasn’t laughed this hard for a while.   
Argo joins in, his booming, jovial tones mixing in with Fitzroy’s shorter peals of laughter.  
It almost feels normal for a small moment.  
The sun breaks fully over the ridge of the Unknown Forest, and the rays burst into the room. A yellow glow washes over everything, and Fitzroy sees how Argo _shines_ , with sweat and sunlight and beauty, and has to stop himself verbalising the words that come bubbling up in his throat. 

Argo sees the same in Fitzroy, and he refuses to stop himself.  
“Fuck. You’re beautiful.”  
Fitzroy swallows the lump in his throat, and tries to crack a smile.  
“I know. Kiss me again.”  
Argo obliges. 

They don’t think about it for the rest of the day.   
There are classes to be had, friends to catch up with, chores to complete. Buckminster questions him about muscle mass. Fitzroy has no idea what he’s talking about, and tries to escape the conversation, but the other man is insistent on finding out Fitzroy’s “secret.” Fitzroy just tells him to eat a balanced diet, and walks away when Buckminster complains that even _Fitzroy_ doesn’t do that and he _must_ have some secret regime.   
Rainer sees an extra spring in Argo’s step, and they have a hushed conversation in the back of their notebooks during classes. Argo is very poetic about Fitzroy, and Rainer humors him. She still hasn’t been completely clued in, but she’s not dumb and can take a hint. What’s more, she’s seen the marks they put on each other. If they were trying to hide it, they weren’t doing a very good job.   
The Firbolg spends the day with Rhodes on the outskirts of the forest.   
The day is peaceful, and no thoughts are had.

The sun sets as they walk back home together, a trio, and Fitzroy catches Argo once again out of the corner of his eye. He’s bathed in sunlight again, and Fitzroy gets thrown back to the morning, and the way he shone while he was sprawled there.  
He was beautiful.  
He’s the same now.  
Argo turns towards Fitzroy, smiling, backlit by the orange glow, and his eyes burn with something Fitzroy can only barely understand.   
All he knows is one thought jumping to the forefront of his mind.

Fitzroy is thinking about it.


End file.
